Nope, the baddy does not heal. Except in one specific (and particularly evil) circumstance.

If you encounter a monster with the peace symbol, it will not attack you. This means you are free to cast non-combat spells (and conversly can't cast combat spells, so no fireballing the peaceful goblins!) This means you can cast heal/resistance and the upcoming stat boosting spells on peaceful monsters. Just to wind up people who come after you...

I have enjoyed playing the Wok RPG very much and, although I have given Chris a lot of feedback already, I decided to play for a while and write down everything that I observed and that I found noteworthy (bugs etc.):

1) Monsters & Creatures:
Special skills (draining / spells) have apparently been taken into consideration when deciding on the level of a creature. However, I still think that a few of the creatures that I came across should have a much higher level:
Black Mist (level 23): the only creature I came across recently that I could not beat (even if resting in between). I got my ass kicked and lost about 4 HP and 2 stats points. I am level 51 and I have easily beaten creatures of much higher level.
Other examples: Phantasmal Mist (level 12), Shadow wolve (level 11), Pseudo dragon (level 3) should have a higher level.

2) Draining & Stats:
a) I have two items that give me a draining resistance of 90 (grey elven robe + amulet of life). Do the effects add up (i.e. resistance of 99), or can you have a max resistance of 90?
b) Nevertheless, even with those two items equipped, I am currently losing stats points faster than I can gain them through tomes and potions. There are two simple reasons for this. First of all, further out there are quite a few monsters with strong draining abilities and secondly, further out I hardly come across any stats raising potions and tomes. The only place here I have ever found a tome / potion recently was around 10 squares away from the city.
Are we meant to go tome / potion hunting at this distance? Or maybe the draining ability of the monsters should be lowered.

3) Items
a) Bug: Sometimes when I open a chest and I find some items, they do not immediately appear in my inventory but I need to refresh first.
b) Maybe it is because I am adventuring far away from the city, but recently I am getting overloaded with stuff. I usually come home with tons and tons of (useless) items.
c) This is not a bug but a probability issue: I have find several identical items in a chest. e.g. I once found 3 steel daggers and another time 3 steel maces.
d) Swords appear to be underrepresented (vs axes / maces / daggers etc.). Is this intentional? Edit: I have recently found quite a few swords
e) Money I get from items is still at least one order of magnitue greater than they money I get directly from killing monsters.

4) Other:
a) Enter City botton: this botton is missing if you have just left the city. You have to move away and come back if you want to re-enter the city.
b) Swimming: whenever you enter a water square, it used to say "you can swim for XX more turns", now it says nothing. Is my swimming ability to high?
b) Healing is now allowed in battle. However if I require healing, than the healing I can usually do is less than the damage the monster does while I heal => a bit pointless (My Healing is at level ~15)

5) Questions:
a) How does the damage modifier work? Is it linear?
b) Could you explain somwhere how skill levels and stats affect the game? Maybe we are supposed to figure this out on our own, but that would be very tidious.

6) Suggestions & Ideas
a) It would be nice if you could colour in all the damage done by a player in green and all the damage done by monsters in red. Especially when you have multiple swings (and the monster has extra abilities) can it take a while to figure out who did how much damage.
b) How about Quests, even if they are simple? It could start off with having to bring an item from location A to B.
c) Similarly, how about non-player characters (NPCs)? Healer or trades that you find in the wilderness. They could give you quests.

Xarfei wrote:I have enjoyed playing the Wok RPG very much and, although I have given Chris a lot of feedback already, I decided to play for a while and write down everything that I observed and that I found noteworthy (bugs etc.):

1) Monsters & Creatures:
Special skills (draining / spells) have apparently been taken into consideration when deciding on the level of a creature. However, I still think that a few of the creatures that I came across should have a much higher level:
Black Mist (level 23): the only creature I came across recently that I could not beat (even if resting in between). I got my ass kicked and lost about 4 HP and 2 stats points. I am level 51 and I have easily beaten creatures of much higher level.
Other examples: Phantasmal Mist (level 12), Shadow wolve (level 11), Pseudo dragon (level 3) should have a higher level.

Actually, only stoning and PATT/PDEF has been taken into account so far. I was hoping for some player feedback on how much the various spells and abilities hurt before doing the others.

2) Draining & Stats:
a) I have two items that give me a draining resistance of 90 (grey elven robe + amulet of life). Do the effects add up (i.e. resistance of 99), or can you have a max resistance of 90?

No, if you have several resistances, the maximum value is taken not a total. The best you can get is 95% (from spells). Also note that the monster has to hit you before it can drain/stone/paralyze/etc so a high PDEF helps ward against these attacks too.

b) Nevertheless, even with those two items equipped, I am currently losing stats points faster than I can gain them through tomes and potions. There are two simple reasons for this. First of all, further out there are quite a few monsters with strong draining abilities and secondly, further out I hardly come across any stats raising potions and tomes. The only place here I have ever found a tome / potion recently was around 10 squares away from the city.
Are we meant to go tome / potion hunting at this distance? Or maybe the draining ability of the monsters should be lowered.

My original thought was that low level players would sell tomes and potions for the cash, allowing a supply to other adventurers through the shop. However, I've only picked up one potion (dexterity) in this way so far so I guess people are using the items instead. I have no problem with people farming the closer squares for good items (you are more likely to get a stat raising stuff closer to the city) but, once you can equip your kick-ass items, the bonus from raising stats is actually pretty low...

3) Items
a) Bug: Sometimes when I open a chest and I find some items, they do not immediately appear in my inventory but I need to refresh first.

Hmm if it's not happening all the time, this will be hard to trace. I assume you're still getting the notification of what you found? If so, taking any action should bring the item into your collection.

b) Maybe it is because I am adventuring far away from the city, but
recently I am getting overloaded with stuff. I usually come home with tons and tons of (useless) items.

You tend to get more items further from the city as there are more chests to open and they have more contents on average. Also you will be going longer before returning to the city. I'm still toying with the idea of a STR based maximum items carried, in which case you'd have to drop stuff you didn't want. Until then though you can always sell items for cash and (unless it is cursed) what is useless to you may be helpful to a lower level character...

c) This is not a bug but a probability issue: I have find several identical items in a chest. e.g. I once found 3 steel daggers and another time 3 steel maces.

This will be a result of the restricted item lists I gave each monster. There are 10 possibilities for items in the chests, sometimes a specific item but usually a class. However I also restrict the level of the item so it is comparable to the difficulty of the square, which may make for quite a small list. I can increase the bounds of what the min and max item levels are, but this will probably just result in more "useless" items instead of the duplicates. Alternatively I can run a check to stop duplicates, but that would mean less loot to sell.

d) Swords appear to be underrepresented (vs axes / maces / daggers etc.). Is this intentional? Edit: I have recently found quite a few swords

It is intentional for different weapons to be stronger/more common at different levels. Otherwise people would always train e.g. sword. If you are planning to get only a little combat experience and do mostly magic then a hammer is better, is you want to do lots of fighting then a dagger or sword is, etc. The balances probably aren't great, but short answer: yes.

e) Money I get from items is still at least one order of magnitue greater than they money I get directly from killing monsters.

You're right, this time I think I'll up the gold from chests though - Makes people feel richer that way!

4) Other:
a) Enter City botton: this botton is missing if you have just left the city. You have to move away and come back if you want to re-enter the city.

Can you check if that's still happening. I thought I'd fixed it. (Doesn't happen here anyway.)

b) Swimming: whenever you enter a water square, it used to say "you can swim for XX more turns", now it says nothing. Is my swimming ability to high?

Same again.

b) Healing is now allowed in battle. However if I require healing, than the healing I can usually do is less than the damage the monster does while I heal => a bit pointless (My Healing is at level ~15)

Yup, a bit pointless, and I'm happy with that (Of course an item could still be useful, but I'd much rather players had to run away to heal...)

5) Questions:
a) How does the damage modifier work? Is it linear?

Only partially implemented, but it's basically a multiplier for damage dealt. (Only for weapons though)

b) Could you explain somwhere how skill levels and stats affect the game? Maybe we are supposed to figure this out on our own, but that would be very tidious.

Stats are involved in many calculations, STR and DEX affect PATT, END and DEX affect PDEF, DEX affects movement costs. INT, WIS and CHA affect spell costs, CHA affects whether monsters will attack, INT and WIS affect your ability to ID items. The formula are varied and keep changing, however the effect from a stat is considerably lower than the effect from a skill. Skills, as you would expect, only help with actions directly tied to the skill in question.

6) Suggestions & Ideas
a) It would be nice if you could colour in all the damage done by a player in green and all the damage done by monsters in red. Especially when you have multiple swings (and the monster has extra abilities) can it take a while to figure out who did how much damage.

Good plan.

b) How about Quests, even if they are simple? It could start off with having to bring an item from location A to B.

Have you looked in the town hall recently?
I'm also thinking that players should be able to pose their own quests. Could be fun...

c) Similarly, how about non-player characters (NPCs)? Healer or trades that you find in the wilderness. They could give you quests.

korexus wrote:
Hmm if it's not happening all the time, this will be hard to trace. I assume you're still getting the notification of what you found? If so, taking any action should bring the item into your collection.

Indeed, I am getting the notification, it only happens sometimes, and either refreshing or moving makes the item appear in my inventory.

Xarfei wrote:It would be nice if you could colour in all the damage done by a player in green and all the damage done by monsters in red. Especially when you have multiple swings (and the monster has extra abilities) can it take a while to figure out who did how much damage.

Done. Especially now that you can have a long event log, this became very useful. Those of you using ie will get some benefit from this, but if you're using the windowed firefox version, you should now find the RPG much prettier

Xarfei wrote:
even with those two items equipped, I am currently losing stats points faster than I can gain them through tomes and potions. [...] maybe the draining ability of the monsters should be lowered.

There was a bug in giving players resistance from items. Such that all item based resistances were working at 1% of advertised capacity. They should work properly now. - Meaning a cloak of 90% drain resistance is actually worth wearing...

Chris, I really like the recent changes and the way things are developing.
I have a few comments however:

a) The central part of the screen (where the images of the monsters / chests are located) is not refreshed properly. I.e. although I have killed certain monsters (or opened a chest), the image (+text) remains on the screen (but disappears when I resfresh). Also, sometimes when I walk into a new square, this section remains empty and I need to refresh to see the creature.
This faulty refreshing occurs roughly 50% of the time. I have IE version 7.0.5730.13.

b) Could you make the event log a bit bigger (3 times the current size maybe). When you have many attacks, it is too small to see everthing that happens during one attack round.

c) Comments on the colouring:
- Any special ability associated actions (by the creatures) are still in white
- I think it would look better if you didn't colour in each entire line, but only the key part, i.e. the damage number e.g.

you hit and cause 36 damage
the monster misses
the monster spits acid for 45 damage

Xarfei wrote:a) The central part of the screen (where the images of the monsters / chests are located) is not refreshed properly. I.e. although I have killed certain monsters (or opened a chest), the image (+text) remains on the screen (but disappears when I resfresh). Also, sometimes when I walk into a new square, this section remains empty and I need to refresh to see the creature.
This faulty refreshing occurs roughly 50% of the time. I have IE version 7.0.5730.13.

I've seen the chest thing happen a few times myself, although nowhere near 50% of the time. I have a nasty feeling that it's because my database operations are getting out of order (so the check for a chest being there is happening before the chest is opened). This sort of thing could cause the monster error you mention too, with the check for a monster happening before the monster is generated. This could be a tricky one...

b) Could you make the event log a bit bigger (3 times the current size maybe). When you have many attacks, it is too small to see everthing that happens during one attack round.

Done, although you really should try the windowed version in firefox. You can make each of the sections whatever size you want and place them wherever you like.

c) Comments on the colouring:
- Any special ability associated actions (by the creatures) are still in white
- I think it would look better if you didn't colour in each entire line, but only the key part, i.e. the damage number e.g.
you hit and cause 36 damage
the monster misses
the monster spits acid for 45 damage

Are we talking about diseasing/poisoning/etc here? I'd like them in a different colour to monster attacks I think, so they are easy to spot (although you are right that white is no good.)

I'd rather not do just the numbers. It will make them stand out but my view has a screen height of message lines so having the whole line coloured helps me find what I'm looking for quickly. I can see arguments for it though (quickly see how much damage you've taken recently) so if people prefer it that way I'll swap it over.

Also, I notice that you've chosen green for player attacks. That does seem more logical, I went with blue to keep the same scheme as turn reports, but can change it if people prefer. (Although of course then we alienate people who are red/green colourblind...)

Oh and on a side note, I may have traced what was happening with your lack of swimming messages. You weren't by any chance levitating were you?

Something else I've noticed in relation to the map is it doesn't always keep up with my location, or in many cases gives a totally different (tundra) description. In particular of water I have to refresh my page to find a safe route to dry land...

The colour coding of individual fighting events is a grand idea and works very well (1st impressions)...

The map doesn't currently update when you're casting movement spells, I know that much. In other situations, it's possible that you're getting a cached version of the map, I can fix that too I think.

Glad you like the colour coding.

The forum times is an issue with phpBB2, something to do with people not always changing to daylight savings at the same time If you want, you can change the time zone in your profile. For the record though, the forums are on GMT, you are currently one hour ahead.

Xarfei wrote:
Special skills (draining / spells) have apparently been taken into consideration when deciding on the level of a creature. However, I still think that a few of the creatures that I came across should have a much higher level:
Black Mist (level 23): the only creature I came across recently that I could not beat (even if resting in between). I got my ass kicked and lost about 4 HP and 2 stats points. I am level 51 and I have easily beaten creatures of much higher level.
Other examples: Phantasmal Mist (level 12), Shadow wolve (level 11), Pseudo dragon (level 3) should have a higher level.

I've redone the monster levels to take spells and abilities into account. This has resulted in a rise in levels pretty much across the board, this could have a few knock on effects.

1) There may not be much variety in monsters near the city as there are now fewer level 1s to pick from.

2) Exp gained could now be too high. You guys were killing these critters before, they haven't changed except to be classified as a higher level and thus worth more exp.

3) Weapon resistances are going to hurt more. Weapon resistance indirectly compares the level of the monster and the weapon, higher levels means more resistance out there...

Levels of monsters now run from 1 to 200 (with one level 300 monster in there, just for kicks), that should keep Xarfei happy for a while

1 Gargantuans hit for 102 damage.
You are dead. You cannot do anything, because you are dead.
You can be brought back to life by the city's morgue.
This will cost you 2293 Activity Points and 231200 gold

That's it all. I have a possible 762 HP

The other perculiar thing was that I didn't incur a minus score but was reduced to exactly 0.

Well, apart from anything else, the plurals are the wrong way round. So there's definitely something funny going on. I'll seed some Gargantuans and fight them to try replicating the problem. I'll also throw in a free resurrect. - There you go.